I couldn't resist forwarding this one.  I wonder if the author's middle
initial is "R"?

BTW, does anyone have any of the new bills I could look at?  Send 'em on
...I'm tired of looking at the same old ones month after month...

--I. B. Freshout
_______________________
Subj:         Re: Twenty Dollar Bill
Date:   12/5/98 12:10:40 AM Eastern Standard Time
Sender: [log in to unmask] (CONSORTIUM OF ART AND ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS)

At 03:02 PM 12/3/98 -0500, you wrote:

>Dear Members of CAAH:  Some time ago a colleague mentioned to me that
>the New York Times had published an article in which there appeared a
>very interesting formal analysis (so it was described) of the new twenty
>dollar bill.

You don't need the article. By looking at the new twenty it is clear that
all the features that once were held in place as coordinated elements of a
"classic" design, have become unhinged and no longer are tied to any formal
or tectonic structure.  The portrait oval floats in an unnatural space in
front of the bill; the face pops out of its frame and seems to revel in its
engraved design.  The numbers, except for a huge inelegant sanserif 20 on
the reverse, are not clear and seem to be deliberately confusing; they now
appear as dark indistinguishable presences where once they were transparent
white.  The engraved design, too, contrasting with unprinted fields of bare
paper, finds no resting place on the surface -- a field on which it does
battle. In short, the new design is mannerist.  And perhaps this unsettling
design is meant, at long last, to imply the unstable foundation of our
currency.

Curiously, at quick glance, it is quite difficult to distinguish the
difference between a $20, a $50 and a $100.  At the bank, the other day, I
asked for change of one of the new $20s, and the teller started to give me
change of a $100.

Robt Baron
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